As she sat in Stansted Airport waiting for her flight to Brno, Kitty listened to all the voicemails that had filled her phone. Most were pleading messages from Tom, left early in the summer, and there was a long, heartfelt one from her friend Amber.
Kitty, I’m so sorry you found out about Tom’s fall from grace the way you did and I wish to God I had told you straight away. It was complete fluke that I saw them together in a bar in Kings Cross station when I was collecting my mum from the train. It was obvious they were more than friends so I charged up to Tom and yelled at him. To give him credit, he was mortally ashamed, said he had made a huge mistake and begged me not to tell you. He promised it was over – in fact, he told the woman in front of me that he wouldn’t be able to see her again. She shrugged and didn’t seem bothered, so it’s not as if it was some big romance. I told Tom I would be watching him like a hawk, that he needed to sort himself out, and if he put a foot wrong again I’d be on the phone to you faster than he could pull up his zipper. But in retrospect I should have told you anyway. We girls should stick together. I’m sorry for getting it wrong. I just didn’t want you to be hurt. Please call me, Kitty.
Her flight began to board just at that moment so she quickly texted Amber: ‘I’m an idiot and don’t deserve a friend like you. Going to Brno for a few days. You’ll have to Google it to find the correct pronunciation, as I had to. Will call and tell all on my return.’
She took her seat on the plane and was about to switch off her phone for take-off when a message came back: ‘I love you. Always have, always will. Text me your return flight time and I’ll collect you from the airport.’
It was late afternoon when Kitty arrived in Brno and caught a bus to the town centre, then a taxi to the address Hana Markova had given. It drew up outside an old-fashioned brick-built house that opened directly onto the street. When Kitty knocked it was flung open by a big-boned woman wearing an apron, who looked to be in her fifties or possibly sixties. She had a ruddy complexion with sparkling blue eyes and short brown hair streaked with grey.
‘Come in, come in,’ she cried, stepping back to let Kitty pass. She gestured for her to go through to an oak-panelled kitchen with windows looking out over a children’s play park. Kitty sat down at an oak table scarred by the scorch marks of generations.
‘I feel as though we are family,’ Hana said, ‘but I can’t quite work out the relationship. Welcome to my home!’
She put the kettle on to boil and produced a plate of apple cake, although Kitty could smell something aromatic cooking in the oven, presumably dinner.
‘It’s very good of you to invite me,’ she said. ‘The mysteries of Dmitri’s life have got right under my skin and I’m desperate to find the truth. It all started when I found this at the cabin.’ She held out the oval pendant she wore round her neck. ‘A jeweller told me it’s Fabergé.’
‘Let me have a closer look.’
Kitty removed the chain and Hana held it by the window to examine the markings on the back in the best light.
‘Do you know what this says?’ she asked.
‘I’m told it is the maker’s mark.’
‘No, above that. It says “Ortipo”.’
Kitty was none the wiser. ‘What does that mean?’
‘Ortipo was the French Bulldog that your great-grandfather gave to Grand Duchess Tatiana back in 1914, soon after they met. She was nursing him in a military hospital in St Petersburg. The piece you are wearing is a ludicrously expensive dog tag.’ She handed it back with a smile. ‘Beautiful, isn’t it?’
‘Wow! Was Dmitri her lover?’ Kitty’s eyes widened.
Hana smiled. ‘They were in love, yes. But they were not lovers in the physical sense as you and I understand it today.’
‘That’s why he had Tatiana’s diary, then.’ Kitty opened her handbag, pulled the diary out of the padded envelope in which she had been protecting it, and passed it to Hana. ‘I’ve had this translated into English, if you want to see the translation?’
‘No, it’s fine. I speak Russian.’ Hana scanned the pages, then checked the date on the last page: 14th July 1918. ‘I have the diary she wrote immediately after this one. The handwriting, the style of placing the dates above the entries is the same.’
Kitty was puzzled: ‘But she died two days after this was written. Did she write another diary in her final days?’
Hana offered her a slice of cake, but Kitty shook her head, totally captivated by the story. ‘Here is the truth that you have flown all the way over to hear: Tatiana did not die in the Ipatiev House. Dmitri helped her to escape.’
It crossed Kitty’s mind to wonder whether she was visiting a crazy person. There had been many conspiracy theories about the Romanovs, with dozens of impostors popping up through the decades, but scientists had proved categorically that they all died. ‘Surely that’s not possible? I read that forensic scientists have proved the exact number of people who were in the graves, and their heights and ages all fit. They cross-matched bone samples with people who have Romanov DNA, including our Prince Philip. How could the weight of so much scientific evidence be wrong?’
Hana was nodding. She knew all this. ‘If you’ve read about the investigation, you’ll know how badly the samples were contaminated over the years. What the scientists won’t admit is that they kept finding DNA they couldn’t match and they brushed it under the carpet, deciding it must belong to someone working in one of the labs that handled the material. But it didn’t. There was another girl in there, the same height as Tatiana, just a local farm girl whose disappearance didn’t warrant a police investigation during the upheaval of the times. She had taken Tatiana’s place on the 15th of July, and it was her who died in the brutal slaughter of the night of the 16th. Tatiana lived.’
Kitty couldn’t take it in. ‘So if Dmitri rescued her … where did she go?’
‘Let me read you the story from Tatiana’s diary. My father found it in a drawer long after she had gone. It is distressing but you are Dmitri’s direct descendant and you deserve to know.’
She walked across to a sideboard and pulled a tattered notebook from one of the drawers. It was flimsy, unlike the solid leather-bound one Kitty had found in the box of family photographs, but the handwriting inside was exactly the same.
Hana began. Although she was translating from Russian to English, she spoke without hesitation. It was clearly something she had read many times before.
Chapter Sixty-Three
A Tent East of Ekaterinburg, July 1918
I asked Vaclav to find me a pencil and notebook because in the past writing a diary used to help me order my thoughts. Somehow I need to pass the hours until I leave this world and perhaps I should make a record so that historians of the future will know what became of the last and most wretched of the Romanov grand duchesses.
It seems incredible that just five days ago Mama, Papa, OTMA and Alexei were all together for that emotional service led by Father Storozhev, where he said the prayer for the dead. If only we had taken poison that night and died in each other’s arms, it would have been a better end. I don’t think any of us had hope any more: the guards were too disrespectful, their behaviour towards us too callous for us to believe we would be allowed a dignified and peaceful exile. But then came that note from Malama on Sunday afternoon and for a short while hope was renewed.
15th July, Monday